


like flowers in the desert

by mysticalmuddle



Series: Spine and Sand [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Courtship, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Logic, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 09:07:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22967461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticalmuddle/pseuds/mysticalmuddle
Summary: After nearly nineteen years in Jakku, the great Western Desert, Rey is no stranger to cruelty. No one in Jakku is. But Rey tries to carry kindness like water--she keeps it with her always. She can't ignore a chance to save a stranger's life, and she can't bring herself to regret it even when it results in her kidnapping at the hands of mischievous Spirit, a mythical being of air and Living Force.Dragged before the Spirit's liege lord under the promise of losing the songsteel slave collar around her neck, Rey demands her reward and her return. But her collar has held fast for nineteen years, and it seems not even Spirit magic can break it. Her Spirit friend is determined, though, that he'll be held to his word. His lord offers Rey a place in their court until her collar can be broken and Rey accepts. But the politics of the court are changing and Rey's place there is not all it seems. Surrounded by the strange and beautiful Spirits, and newly learning about the Force that Lives, Rey must choose to treat her kindness like more than water, because it might be the only thing that can save her in this strange new land.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron & Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Spine and Sand [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650577
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	like flowers in the desert

### Prologue

> _When with the skin you do acknowledge drought,  
>  The dry in the voice, the lightness of feet, the fine  
>  Flake of the heat at every level line;_
> 
> _When with the hand you learn to touch without  
>  Surprise the spine for the leaf, the prickled petal,  
>  The stone scorched in the shine, and the wood brittle;_
> 
> _Then where the pipe drips and the fronds sprout  
>  And the foot-square forest of clover blooms in sand,  
>  You will lean and watch, but never touch with your hand._
> 
> _—Josephine Miles, Desert_

* * *

Under the moonlight, tucked near the sweet-water sea, grows a place so luscious with greenery and blooming dazzles of colored flowers, so sweet in the air and gentle in the eye that any mere man would die before he wished to leave it. 

The untouchable crashing waves and invisible trickling streams of the living world lavishes itself here; it spills into the fountains and climbs the rising crops and curls into the hearts of the people so that they grow strange and fae from it, feeling always that silvery touch like so much moonlight as it bathes them.

It glitters and falls with heavy touches on a place that is both palace and wild park. It creeps under stone arches hung with silk curtains but empty of window panes. It collects on soft pallets and pools in wine cups. It swirls in eddies around all who live there, shoring itself in their veins.

But there is one place here which calls this silver light above all else, and so it slips in great washes nearer to the seashore, in the furthest chamber from the rest. It's made all of thick green bush and slender pale columns, and strung above with silk so sheer one could see the stars through it. Here this tide of the living world gathers itself.

Just outside, hidden by flowering vines strung and coaxed over curling trellises, a pair of guards stand at attention, their snowy armor shining slickly with milky white moonlight. They taste the thin edge of dreams creeping through the air, carried on floating silver currents, but loyalty carves itself so deep in their bones that they will never betray the dreamer who sleeps beyond.

The man inside sleeps in a leafy bower like an animal, curled up and snuffling among the tender clover. Blooming nightflowers perfume the air around him; silver light just invisible to the eye dusts through his hair, slips between his lips. He sleeps denned as an animal does, but with none of the careless oblivion. He sleeps restlessly. 

His gloved hand curls in the grass, grasping at something that were he awake, he couldn’t name.

Near his hand is the hilt of a sword with no blade; under his cheek is the wadded cloak of his station, rich with embroidery and smeared through with grass stains. He shuts his eyes tightly as he dreams, but they move still behind his lids. The man sleeps, and he dreams. 

And he sees a girl.

He looks down at her, at this scrawny girl, no more than an outline wrapped and swaddled over each limb in faded rags. She moves her hands and feet strangely, and as he dreams further, he sees that she climbs.

A thin rope dangles from on high, and the girl moves hand over fist along it, each motion of her body painted with strain. Sunlight slides down over her, a white malignant glare that squints the girl’s eyes in frustration. Around her swims a thousand thousand flecks of dust that each turn in the sun, briefly, to shimmering chips of jewels and flakes of gold.

Below them the dust spirals down like snow, landing in heavy drifts across the floor. The fistfuls of dust pile up orange and encroaching, and they swallow the floor. They swallow the debris. They pile and pile and swallow the end of the rope. 

Far below him, but not so far as that, the girl’s ascent arrests. Her hands slip on the rope and she slides downward three heart-stopping inches with a shriek.

Ice drives itself into the man’s heart; he wears her terror on his own face. Twinned.

The dreaming man crashes closer to the steep edge, his knees banging against the rough metal floor. His hand, swallowed always by the heavy black leather glove, reaches out as if his arm alone could span the breadth of the distance and he shouts this girl’s name.

It echoes through the metal pit, shouting itself with a fierce and determined call. It crashes and collides in the climbing girl's heart. Never before has someone in this place named her. When she climbs, she has always climbed alone. 

She looks up, the sun forcing her eyes nearly closed, and hauls herself up again as if a single foot less space could let her see more clearly the man’s face.

In his bower, the man’s mouth says a word, but there is no one there to hear it. Silver light veils his face; his hand closes over air. 

In his dream, the girl tilts her face up and up, her head haloed in white and gritty gold. Sunlight blinds her to him. The echoes of her name are silent now. “It’s too far,” she sighs, and the words come into his head like she’s shouted them.

The man shoves himself to his feet, away from the edge, and the girl’s face falls. She looks down and the rope slips through her fingers again, another slide and another shriek.

His heart is a drum in his chest. The man finds the second end of the rope, tethered to a heavy steel bar just behind himself The fibercord is slick against the leather; he tears his gloves off and leaves them where they fall. The muscles of his arms bugle and strain as he works the rope around his thick fists, sets his feet against the metal, and pulls.

“It’s too far,” the girl cries and her voice echoes, lonesome. _Far, far._

_Far._

“No,” the dreaming man says through his teeth. “It’s not.”

His is a voice that doesn’t allow argument. He bends and hauls up another length of fibercord.

Below him, glittering with sweat and sun, the girl bolsters as the rope rises. Someone above her pulls; she does not climb alone anymore. She sets her jaw again and creeps ever upward. 

They pant. Her hands are aching, bloodying the rope. His back and shoulders scream. Behind him something rises with creaking rustles, and fear creeps down his spine with icy fingers. He looks behind him, the rope slipping from his fingers as he turns, and the girl screams.

He catches the rope tightly, his heart hammering in his chest. “Don’t look back!” the girl screams and fear makes her voice raw. Blood slips between her clenched fingers and drips down the rope. The rising dunes below take it hungrily into a thousand sand-grain mouths.

Fear, greater than his fear of what might be behind him, stirs in the man’s heart. “Don’t look down!” he calls back, and starts to bring the rope up hand over fist.

Below him, the girl promises, “I won’t. I won’t.” Her eyes open wide for just a moment, luminous, as she stares.

They labor together, two beasts of burden yoked to a single chain. Pull and _breathe_ and climb and _breathe_ , all the while watching each other. The rope between them is strong and able. There’s no fear in their hearts that it will break.

But it’s a long rope and a long drop. The man cannot pull forever and the girl cannot climb forever. Behind him comes the creaking, snapping, rustling. Below her the sand climbs and climbs with insidious whispers.

“It’s too far,” the girl says again. _Far, far._

_Far._

It’s not, the man aches to say, but strain takes his breath and takes his voice. The girl looks up at him with sun-white eyes, looks past him to whatever strange beast lurks there, and her face is washed with despair.

She takes a hand from the rope.

“No!” the man shouts. He calls her name again, and the sand mounding below swallows the noise. 

He wakes, sudden and sweating. The bower is still, the moonlight sweet. His hand is stretched out, empty. Faintly comes the washing hush of the sea. 

A dream is a dream, except when it isn’t. His heart thunders in his chest. 

Isn’t, isn’t.

He knows he has seen something he must understand. He must take this sacred knowledge into himself and write it into his bones; he must know it as he knows every movement of his blade. But as he strains to remember the dream, it slips like silver light through the slick leather covering his fingers. He cannot understand, cannot remember what he must understand, and his failure gnaws at him.

The man grits his teeth and pounds his fist upon the ground, pressure growing in his chest. His failure _tears_ at him.

He strikes out at the bower with an empty hand, and one of the slender beams explodes into jagged chips, shearing down across the tender green plants and bloodying his arm.

In his mind, the girl is a phantom now, a rag-doll washed in gold and white. Still, empty. Unpersoned. To understand this girl, he must know the making of her and the making of her is yet lost to him. He lays down in the soft grass, and shuts his eyes against the violent moonlight. He waits but his forced patience is useless. He doesn’t dream again. 

He must understand, and he cannot. The last of the dream slips away like sand through a sieve.

The silvery tide washes out. It travels through light and dark and veins of blood. It understands the girl. The making of this girl is her home, and her home is Jakku.

This is Jakku:

First, take a place in which the whole world is as sweet and green as that tender seaside jewel and then drive it wickedly with a hundred hundred years of drought. Let great winds come and blow away any good soil; let the harsh sun dry away any living thing that dares to defy it. 

And in this place where long the sweet rains have been gone away, crash a fierce and mighty battle between man and spirit. Lay out great and fantastical siege engines along both war sides, and crash them upon each other. Then crash upon them both fire and arrows and cursed poisons that burn and explode. Streak any standing thing with plasma burns; gouge holes with plasma into steel walls and armor. 

Scatter sheets of metal and wooden posts and soldiers’ bodies across the sand until all lay half-buried in the dunes like a child’s discarded toys. 

And when this battle is over, usher both sides of that mighty war home in twinned defeat, leaving their refuse and dead behind to be stricken from memory. And to take their place, plant a crop of peoples hardened by life and sun and wind and time. 

Mix with them one part people who've come from far away to find their fortune here, and let them lash chains around those who creep across and eek out a meager living from the bones of these great beasts and the bones of the men who commanded them.

The dead, and those who pick at them, and those who hold the chains.

This, now, is Jakku.

And into this place plant the girl, a small and tender bud who digs her roots deep into sand. Who creeps and picks her way through her small and scrapping childhood until those gentler years have worn away. 

Now she hovers at the edge of a lean and dangerous womanhood. Shape her with lashing wind and scorching sun and then drive hunger like pikes into her very bones. Make her smart and brave and fierce despite the twisting metal collar she wears around her neck, wrapped all around with a thin strip of linen to keep it from chafing at her neck’s tender skin.

And like that tender white strip of skin that lays untouched by the world around it, wind around her very heart untouchable armor that will guard the bruise-soft inside of herself. 

Lash her with scouring sands and beat her with unfriendly hands and starve her until her eyes hollow and thirsty cracks her lips. This tender bud has spikes around the pale flowers; the inside of herself is still silk to the touch.

This is the girl:

She is smart and brave and fierce. 

Despite the desert, she is still kind.

She walks ten paces behind a fat man who rides on an old and weary ass and as she walks she drags behind her a metal sled that runs smoothly across the powdery sand. On this sack is an odd assortment; boxes and heaped sacks and wooden barrels that shroud the true—and valuable—contents from the heat, the creeping sand, and the wandering eyes of all those who also walk the desert.

The night before, this girl curled into the hollows of the still warm sand and exhaustion draped sleep heavily over her. If she also dreamt of an arduous climb, dreamt of a man far above her who stood as a black slash of color in the grey and white twilight, she keeps these dreams to herself alone. Now she bows her head under the thin veneer of compliance that the hot sun beats into her, under the weight of her load and her collar both.

Invisible to the eye, untouchable to the hand, a tide washes around her as sweet and silvery as the moonlight.

* * *


End file.
